A few weeks months back, ESPN’s Scott Van Pelt had Dabo Swinney on his SportsCenter segment, “One Big Thing” after he signed his record-setting contract, which will pay him $93 million over the next 10 years.
Van Pelt, who always delivers entertaining interviews due to his cunning personality and quick wit, told the Clemson coach he can no longer use “Little ole Clemson” when describing his program because Clemson has become a juggernaut in college football. The Tigers are no longer considered an underdog by any stretch.
Van Pelt is right. Clemson has become a juggernaut. The Tigers, as we all know, have won two of the last three national championships and have played for it in three of the last four years.
Clemson is 55-4 over the last four seasons, tied with Alabama with the best record ever over a four-year span. The Tigers are 46-2 during the regular season the last four years. One loss was by a point on a last-second field goal at home and the other loss was a three-point defeat at Syracuse when they lost starting quarterback Kelly Bryant to a concussion.
Clemson has won the last four ACC Championships. Has made four straight College Football Playoff and last year beat Notre Dame and Alabama by 27 and 28 points to become the first 15-0 team in the modern era of college football.
The Tigers are a juggernaut.
However, Clemson is also Little Ole Clemson, too. If you have been to Clemson, you know what I’m talking about. The town has two traffic lights on College Ave., three if you count the one on the Highway 123 intersection.
There are five traffic lights all together from the time you come into Clemson on 123 and leave it heading towards Seneca. There are a few on Perimeter Road and a some by the university, but overall, Clemson does not have many traffic lights. Why? Because it is a small town.
In fact, Clemson is the smallest college town, per capita, in the entire FBS. The smallest.
So, when Swinney says “Little Ole Clemson” he is not really saying it in relation to the program he has built as much as he is saying it based on the size of the school, the alumni base and the city of Clemson itself.
I always love it when an opposing fan visits Clemson for the first time. Most college football fans, when they see Clemson on T.V., all they see is the 80,000 people that pack Memorial Stadium on game days. To the television viewers, it seems like any other big-time stadium.
However, what they don’t realize is Memorial Stadium is the biggest structure in Clemson and there is nothing else that even compares. I have had many and many opposing fans tell me they had no idea Clemson was so small. They just assumed it was a small college town like Athens, Auburn or Oxford. They had no idea Clemson was so small.
Despite Clemson’s success in college football, there are still plenty of people out there that don’t really know where Clemson is located. A lot of those people think it is located in North Carolina.
Clemson has literally always been the little guy. No matter how big Clemson plays on the national stage in college football, the players and coaches know they represent a small town in Upstate South Carolina that is extremely proud of its college football team.
So, when Swinney says “Little ole Clemson” the next time, understand what he is saying and who he is truly talking to. Because when you think about it, he is right, it’s amazing what Little ole Clemson has the best college football program in the country right now.